Khalifa Haftar

Khalifa Belqasim Hefter (1 January 1949-) was a general of the Libyan National Army who fought in the Libyan Civil War and led the rebellion against the Islamist State of Libya in Operation Dignity in 2014.

Biography
Hefter was born in Benghazi to the al-Farjani tribe of Libya, and assisted General Muammar Gaddafi in overthrowing King Idris I of Libya in the coup of 1969. In 1986 he became a colonel and he was the commander of the forces of the Libyan Arab Jamahirya in the Libyan-Chadian War. Hefter was captured, and to cover up his invasion of Chad (he denied Libyan troops in Chad), Gadaffi disavowed Hefter and his men in 1987.

In 1990, Hefter traveled to the United States, where he was trained by the CIA in Langley, Virginia. In 2011 he returned to Libya to fight in the Libyan Civil War for the rebels, helping to overthrow his former president Gaddafi. However, he was also at odds with the new State of Libya, and in May 2014 he launched Operation Dignity, a rebellion against the State of Libya. Hefter launched a combined air and ground attack against government forces, as the coup intensified.